


these volatile times

by helenecixous



Category: Happy Valley (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Getting Together, Soulmark AU, im just gay for slancs lbr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:05:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9594974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helenecixous/pseuds/helenecixous
Summary: Catherine takes a breath, and reaches out carefully. Her fingers are trembling slightly, and Kirsten tilts her head, bearing her neck. “Here,” she says softly, gesturing to the side of her neck at the curve of her jaw.





	

Catherine’s got marks everywhere, her hands are a chalky pastel rainbow - accepted, professional, distant, from a thousand strangers she’d shaken hands with at conferences and ceremonies and the like. Most of hers are faded, never as bright as the ones she leaves on others, and there are blues that bleed into greens that bleed into yellows all across her wrists, shadows of shades that belong to faces she no longer remembers. Some of them are from so long ago that they’re no longer there, but some of them she knows will never fade an inch. For example, there’s the warm, burnt orange running down the side of her forefinger. It’s small, easily missed, but it’s one of the brightest she knows she’ll ever have - from Clare. There are the ones from her parents, burgundy from her mother, pale green from her father, and one of her earliest memories is of overhearing her mother sobbing one night. She’d watched from the hallway, clutching her blanket around her shoulders, pressed her face up to the crack in the door and held her breath as she watched her mum cry, asking what they had done wrong: “It’s so dull on both of them - it’s barely there, it’s barely there.” It’s with a certain degree of guilt that she tries to keep these ones covered with long sleeve shirts or makeup; since both of her parents died their marks have faded with their memories, and now just looking at them leaves a bad taste in her mouth.

 

She exchanges marks with Joyce by accident. Not that she’s one of those people who refuse to mark people until they’ve spent at least six hours in each other’s company, or whatever the fuck - it’s just that they’d both been far too busy and preoccupied with fending off the men who had just wanted to grope them instead of showing them how to do their jobs. She’d been out with some people she can’t remember the names of, her cheeks rosy and her smile wide, her throat burning with tobacco and the tang of red wine, and she’d turned, presumably heading back to the bar - or was she going outside? - and she’d bumped into Joyce. Joyce, this small and extremely bad tempered, quick witted and sharp tongued bitch, who Catherine had been quite taken with immediately. There had been wine spilt between them, some swearing, some laughing, and some shouted apologies over the noise of The Smiths. Joyce had leant closer to say something, and Catherine had put her hand on Joyce’s arm instinctively, and she’d come away with plum-purple smudges on her fingertips, which, for once, matched the intensity of her forest green fingerprints on Joyce’s forearm.

For a while after that they’d both flirted with the idea that their marks could be The Marks, they were both so bright, and Catherine won’t ever forget the day Joyce had looked at her when they were on door to door, and grinned.

“What’re you lookin’ at me like that for?”

Joyce had shrugged, gestured to her arm. “Don’t you think we should…”

“We should…?” Catherine prompted, raising an eyebrow and standing still, watching her friend. “We should what?”

“See if it, y’know. Fits.”

Catherine had sighed, and leant closer to Joyce. “Your  _ words,  _ love, use your  _ words.” _

Joyce had squared her shoulders, lifted her chin defiantly, cupped the back of Catherine’s neck and they’d kissed, in the middle of the (thankfully deserted) street. Years later, Joyce would tell Catherine how easy it is to get lost in her, even as they pulled apart and watched each other for a second before coming to a unanimous decision that they were probably better off as friends.

 

She’s twenty when she meets Richard, twenty when she realises that the marks on her skin can’t determine her future, twenty when she realises that life inside her was more decisive than her marks. When the pregnancy test shows positive, instead of giving her a bright mark, Richard gives her an engagement ring. They get married fairly quickly, and by the time Becky’s born they’ve got a good house and good careers and life slows down. It isn’t too long before Daniel comes along, and she’s relieved when she marks them both and they stay bright, among the brightest she’s ever given.

She doesn’t see much of Richard, or Joyce, spends most of her time at work until she gets that promotion they’d needed her to get, and deflects questions about her marriage and his mark on her as easily as breathing. It’s easier to pretend that she doesn’t know he’s cheating, to pretend that he notices her latest mark - a bruise purple coloured handprint around her throat - when she gets home that night, and is concerned. It’s easier to pretend to everyone else that the only things that they have in common aren’t just an adoration for their children, and the inability to stop looking, all the time, for somebody new. Catherine supposes that the marks are important, after all, because she just can’t get herself to stop feeling drained when she gets into bed with him every night, can’t stop the way she just feels nothing when he kisses her, and she tells herself that things will work out the way they’re supposed to. One day.

 

It’s seventeen minutes past three in the morning when Clare calls, and all Catherine can make out is a slurred address and a quiet admission, a plea, and she’s out of bed and pulling her jeans on before she’s even hung up. She’s in the car, trying to fit the key into the ignition with hands that are trembling when she gets a call from Mike, who tells her that there’s been a bust up in a local drug den, and Catherine wants to cry. She can’t get there fast enough, and when she does, Clare’s barely responsive.

A needle that looks tarnished and dull with dirty fingerprints even from where Catherine’s standing is on the ground next to her, and to her own ears her voice sounds far away and panicked as she calls Clare’s name, crouches beside her, calling her over and over, fumbling for her phone to call an ambulance with one hand as the other searches for the faintest whisper of a pulse. It’s easy enough to snap into business mode, to stay calm as she listens to the instructions of the operator and supplies them with the information that they need, but as she does as they tell her, and rolls Clare onto her side, the sight of her sister’s arm makes her breath tumble out of her lungs in a rush.

“Clare?” she whispers, her voice cracking as she holds her arm gently, her fingertips running over the messy puncture wounds and the myriad of new colours around them. Clare’s covered in dried blood that may or may not all be hers, and grime, and milky white discharge from god knows what she’s been pumping into her veins. For the first time, Catherine’s terrifyingly aware that she might lose her.

 

Clare starts spending more time at Catherine’s, and it’s a change to their lives that Catherine’s positive Richard just ignores. Over time, the marks on Clare’s arm - every kind - fade, and colour returns to her cheeks and a light returns to her eyes, and for a while, it’s all okay.

 

She remembers the exact day that Becky comes home with an icy blue handprint around her neck that spreads to her cheeks and clashes with the bruise surrounding it. She tries to talk, to ask, to help, but Becky does what Becky’s good at, and she shuts down. Catherine clenches her teeth that night when she expresses her worries to Clare, because she knows, she says, she senses a shift in her daughter. The next six months are irrelevant when she remembers it now. It all pales away to that whispered conversation in the bathroom, whispers that might as well have been shouts, winces and tears and Becky’s hand curved around her belly, curved around the life inside of her that hadn’t gone away with her silence.

 

Ryan doesn’t get a mark from his mum - she doesn’t have anything at all to do with him, leaves it to Catherine, which Catherine understands. The first time he opens his eyes, Catherine cries, and he wriggles in her arms, comes away with a dark green shadow on his left shoulder. It’s the only one he gets before Catherine gets shaken awake by Clare. The night is falling away to morning, and as she rolls over, blinks her eyes awake and asks what’s wrong, she becomes dimly aware that the sobbing she can hear isn’t coming from a baby.

“It’s - it’s our Becky,” Clare says, and even though she’s whispering, Catherine reels like she’s been screamed at, slapped. “Catherine - Richard, he-”

She can hear her husband moaning in the hallway, and she throws back the covers, stands, her eyes impossibly wide and terrified as she pushes past her sister, and Clare follows, gets there just in time to watch Catherine falter, pick up the note, and it’s then that it happens. She watches as Catherine trembles, and there's a rage inside her.

They say the death of a child is all it takes to extinguish a fire, but Clare can see it. She watches through her own tear obscured vision, as Catherine becomes consumed. She can see the smoke filling her lungs and blurring her vision, and she's about to say something, to reach out, to do the impossible - to console, but Catherine turns her head and coughs up embers, she coughs, and cries, and chokes on this disaster.

 

Richard leaves her, and it’s a blessing. He leaves, and takes Daniel with him. They both refuse to do so much as look at Ryan, and Catherine doesn’t think she can blame them. Sometimes, he sits up in his cot and wails, screams, holds his arms out to her, and all she can do is watch him, trying wordlessly to translate to this child - this baby - that he is not her child, that he won’t ever replace her child, that part of her that she lost.

She wouldn’t have been able to do it without Clare, she knows. Wouldn’t have been able to take leave from work and raise a child and mourn the loss of her daughter at the same time as staying sane. Sometimes she swears she feels her grip on reality weaken, she can feel it slipping away from her as she descends a little further each day into that cold darkness. Food tastes the same, and every night she lulls herself to sleep with just one thought - one name - to keep her company. For months all she can do is dig her nails into her palms and try not to lose it completely.

 

In the end, it’s Clare who gets her back to work. Clare, who comes home one night with a smile brighter than usual, and sleeves that she keeps pulled over her hands anxiously. Catherine notices, and says nothing, just raises her eyebrows until Ryan goes upstairs and Clare puts the kettle on.

“What’ve you done?” she asks, after closing the door, her tone still half flat.

“What ‘ave I what?” Clare says, turning to look at Catherine, frowning.

Catherine reaches forward, plucks Clare’s sleeve, already expecting the worst. “Clare, are you- where’ve you been?”

“Catherine!” Clare chastises, pulling her arm away so she can pour two mugs of tea. “Have I hell. I ain’t been usin’ again, so don’t even go there. I wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re hidin’ somethin’,” Catherine says, and although Clare’s denial was convincing, it’s not enough to allay Catherine’s doubts. “Don’t tell me you’re not. I wa’n’t born yesterday.”

Clare sighs, adding the sugar to Catherine’s tea and stirring slowly before she looks up at her. “I met someone,” she says. “An’ I got a mark.”

“A mark? Already? You normally wait.”

“I know what I usually do, Catherine. But this one’s different.”

Catherine reaches past her and picks up her mug, surveying her carefully. “Well? Go on, let me see it.”

Clare huffs, leans against the counter and tugs her sleeve up, and Catherine doesn’t miss the way her face lights up again, like God Herself had descended just to mark her. There’s a mark that covers most of the muddy ones in the crook of her elbow, a fleeting stroke, Catherine can tell. It’s a nondescript kind of baby blue, and it’s just as bright as Catherine’s own on her. She looks up at her sister, her eyebrows raised.

“She’s married,” Clare says quietly, shrugging as she eventually tears her gaze away from her arm. “So it ain’t like it’s gonna go anywhere. It’s just… nice to know.”

Catherine nods, and smiles genuinely for what feels like the first time in years. She wraps her arms around Clare’s shoulders and rocks her like she used to when they were growing up. “So was I,” she says gently. “It don’t really mean anythin’, remember.”

Clare hugs her back, squeezes her tightly. “You should go back,” she says. “I’ve got Ryan, an’ I’m goin’ t’ start volunteerin’ down at The Mission when he’s at school, like.”

Catherine begins to protest, she remembers, but Clare just shakes her head. “You’ve gotta go back, Catherine. The longer you leave it, the harder it’ll be.”

 

She’s welcomed back warmly enough, and she finds that it’s easier to manage everything when she’s in uniform, and even when she’s back at home she’s still busy with work. It’s a nice distraction, a good go at imitating normality. She’s happy to be back in the office with everybody else, happy to be an officer again. The pay as detective had been nice, but this… She sits back at her desk and pulls her glasses off, listens to the chatter outside her door, listens to Joyce laugh loudly at something. This, this is something else, she thinks. It’s so easy for her now to feel like she belongs, and to believe that she has a family with these people.

 

She’s been back less than a year when Joyce comes in without knocking. She perches on the corner of Catherine’s desk and steals a crisp from the open packet. “‘ave you heard?” she asks.

“Heard?” Catherine repeats, not looking up from her computer. “Heard what?”

“About the new kids in town? We’ve got a couple of newbies comin’ in tomorrow. Mike said he’d let you know because he wants you to give them both the tour, but it looks like I made the right call when I told him he’d got a memory about as useful as a fart in a jam jar, judgin’ by the look of complete bemusement on your face.”

Catherine sighs, but there’s no real frustration in it. “He’s lucky we’re ‘avin’ a slow week,” she says. “What would I do without you, hm? The whole world would go under if you took a sick day.”

Joyce rolls her eyes and punches Catherine’s arm, grinning. “Flattery gets you nowhere, sweetheart,” she says, and laughs when Catherine pulls a face.

“Flattery? I mean it! We’d be in the shit without your excellent phone answering abilities.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Joyce mutters, standing up and heading to the door. “You wanna watch your tone, that shit’ll come back around to bite you eventually.”

“I look forward to it!” Catherine calls after her, smiling to herself as she goes back to typing up her reports, and makes a mental note to send Mike a brief email confirming tomorrow.

 

It turns out that she knows one of the newbies - Shafiq, his name is, and Catherine knows him from the conference she’d attended in Mike’s place. The other one, Kirsten, Catherine doesn’t recognise. She takes them both around the nick, shows them where everything is and tells them who to avoid, and she’s not surprised that they both keep their gloves on and keep their hands clasped firmly behind their backs. She can see that Kirsten’s got more visible colours than Shaf does, can see a red one peeking out from below her collar, but they both look a little uncomfortable, hesitant to touch anything. She wonders whether they’d exchanged marks already, and doesn’t pay much attention to the small flips her stomach keeps doing whenever Kirsten looks at her, and she definitely doesn’t wonder for a second whether Kirsten’s experiencing a similar kind of thing.

“So… How long ‘ave you been workin’ here?” Kirsten asks her, once Shafiq has gone and Catherine invites her on her patrol.

“Long enough,” Catherine says, concentrating on the road but flashing her a quick smile. “I’ve been back for about eleven months, give or take.”

“You ‘ad time off?” Kirsten asks, her eyebrows raised. “An’ you’re still the sergeant?”

Catherine grins, and shrugs, briefly admiring the way her hand looks on the steering wheel, free of a wedding ring. “Me daughter died,” she says. “I took time off, and I guess they just…”

“Needed you?”

She looks at Kirsten then, and considers her for a second. “I wouldn’t go as far,” she says. “But there’s somethin’ quite attractive about the way we all work as a team, I suppose.”

She doesn’t miss the way Kirsten blushes, and looks down at her lap, and then she catches herself wondering for a split second what colour she is.

 

When Kirsten gets home that night, she’s not really surprised that she can’t get the sergeant out of her mind. She thinks of the handprint around Catherine’s throat, remembers the plethora of colours up her arms and over her hands, but more than that she can’t stop thinking about the blue of her eyes, and the way her fingers curled around her coffee mug, and the way she ties up her hair. She treats herself to a Chinese takeaway, mentally high fiving herself for not losing it and making a fool of herself on her first day, especially since she’s apparently going to be working under a woman who makes her heart do stupid things every time their eyes meet.

She takes her Chinese into the bath with her and relaxes into the hot bubbles, inspects each mark and traces them with her fingertips, reminding herself where and who each one came from, and wondering whether she and Catherine will ever exchange them, and how bright they’ll end up being.

 

She fits in nicely, is surprised that they’re so willing to accept her and Shaf into their ranks, and not just to accept them - but to actually treat them like they belong. She exchanges marks with most of them (bar Twiggy, who has just four marks that she can see, and Catherine, who had just managed to avoid the topic - somehow), and it’s when she comes back from lunch, juggling her radio and her car keys and a coffee and some Greggs, that she hears Joyce and Catherine talking about her. She steps forward quietly, can see just enough into the room to watch Joyce holding her arm out, and to see Catherine point to a spot and raise an eyebrow.

“Didn’t really know what colour she’d be but she’s quite bright,” Joyce is saying, shrugging and pulling her sleeve back down. “I don’t know why you don’t just do it. You ‘aven’t held back with anyone else.”

“Yellow’s not really my colour,” Catherine says, and Kirsten winces, wanting to walk away and yet knowing that she’s stuck in that purgatory of eavesdropping, where any noise you make whether you walk forwards or backwards, is going to be suspicious as hell. “And besides,” the sergeant says, taking a bite of her sandwich. “I told you, there’s like this… this pull. I dunno if she feels it too, but she’s about half my age, and with everything with Becky and Richard, I just ain’t sure it’s worth it.”

“You’ve got to stop punishing yourself,” Joyce says, so softly that Kirsten can hardly hear. “Honestly, Catherine, you deserve a bit of happiness after what happened. God knows you do. And if your Clare can do it after everything that happened to her - how many near death experiences did she have? - then you should too.”

There’s a shift, Catherine stands up and dumps the packaging from her lunch into the bin. “We’ll see,” is all she says, and Kirsten lets out the breath she’d not realised she’d been holding.

Joyce sighs and shakes her head, and it’s then that the door opens and cold air is ushered in by Shafiq and Twiggy, who are making enough noise to cover Kirsten joining them. Less than thirty seconds later, Joyce is leaving Catherine’s office and closing the door with a soft click behind her, without anything more than a smile and a flirty “late again, kids?” in their direction before she heads back to reception.

 

She doesn’t focus for the rest of the week. She’s become almost unbearably aware of the way Catherine practically shies away from her, will do anything she can to put as much distance between the two of them as is physically possible. And she’s not the only one who feels something funny - Kirsten can’t ignore the way her body seems to itch when she’s near Catherine, a kind of tingle that starts in her fingertips and then spreads like fire, making it near impossible for her to sit still. If she concentrates, she can see the lines around Catherine’s mouth as the older woman fights not to squirm too, Kirsten’s sure. By the time the seventh month rolls around she’s determined to just exchange marks, to get it over with, because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stand, to think about anything that’s not Catherine, even when she’s at work. She’s never felt anything like it before.

 

To Kirsten’s surprise, however, it’s Catherine who caves first. She’s typing up some report or email and Kirsten’s the only one left. It’s dark outside, and the wind is howling, rattling the windows in their frames, and forcing the rain against them so fiercely it makes Kirsten wince. She’s packing her stuff away, making sure her desktop is switched off and all of her things are in her pockets when Catherine calls her, so quietly that for a second Kirsten thinks that she imagined it.

“Kirsten,” Catherine repeats, and when Kirsten looks over she’s surprised to see Catherine standing, leaning on the doorframe. “You got a minute, love?”

Hesitating, Kirsten rubs the back of her neck before she agrees, smiling and wandering over. “What’s up?” she asks, careful not to stand too close.

Catherine looks briefly like she wants to back out of whatever she wants to say, looks like she’d rather strike up some mundane conversation about how awful the weather is, before she sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose. “I dunno if you’ve noticed,” she begins carefully. “This… This thing, whatever it is. There’s something.” 

Kirsten nods, oddly calm. She knows what’s coming, and she would be, should be panicking, but it’s strangely endearing to see Catherine Cawood a little bit flustered. “Yeah, I noticed,” she says. “If you’re talkin’ about the weird feeling I’m gettin’ about you and me and marks and all.”

Catherine seems marginally relieved, nodding slowly. “Yeah, that’s the one,” she says, clearing her throat. “I’m just wonderin’ whether it’d just work out easier for everyone involved if we swapped marks.” Before Kirsten can agree (and she would’ve done then, quickly), Catherine talks again. “And I think we both know they’re gonna be bright, but… nothing can come of it, okay? I’m your boss, and I’m that much older than you, and there’s so much goin’ on in my life right now I can’t drag you or anybody into it. An’ I don’t want to.”

Her words settle in the pit of Kirsten’s stomach, and she sighs, nodding. “Yeah, that’s all right,” she says. “That’s fair enough.”

Catherine takes a breath, and reaches out carefully. Her fingers are trembling slightly, and Kirsten tilts her head, bearing her neck. “Here,” she says softly, gesturing to the side of her neck at the curve of her jaw.

The sergeant’s eyes are focused and she steps forward, slowly brushes the back of her knuckles over Kirsten’s skin, concentrating as much as she might do if she was tattooing a particularly intricate design on a person, and Kirsten gasps involuntarily. Catherine steps back, watching Kirsten’s neck as Kirsten watches Catherine’s fingers, and they silently watch their marks bloom on each other, spreading steadily and settling, bright even in the gloom of the desk lamp and the streetlight outside.

Kirsten can tell that Catherine’s as dizzy with it as she is, and as their eyes meet they both step forward, and Catherine’s cupping the sides of Kirsten’s neck to bring her closer, and all Kirsten can think about is how warm her hands are, how gentle but assured, and then they’re kissing, and it feels like a secret, and she’s gasping into Catherine’s mouth as she’s pressed back against the door, arching into the older woman and holding her close, desperate for more contact, and she’s climbing and climbing to somewhere she’s never been before, and Catherine’s lips are on her jaw, her neck before they’re back to her lips, and Catherine kisses the strength out of her before there’s suddenly nothing.

Kirsten opens her eyes, panting slightly, watching as Catherine steps back, shaking her head and running a hand through her hair. “I’m sorry,” she says, swallowing. “I’m sorry, that - that shouldn’t ‘ave happened, Kirsten, that wa’n’t fair of me.”

“Catherine-”

Catherine just smiles apologetically, the colour still high on her cheeks as she grabs her coat and leaves the room, leaving Kirsten with reddened lips and a new colour to make sense of.

 

Despite Kirsten’s efforts to convince Catherine that whatever it is that’s going on between them isn’t bad or taboo, Catherine’s having none of it. She sends Kirsten out with Shafiq for patrol duty, has her sending emails or answering calls or typing up reports or reorganising files, but doesn’t try to hide the yellow on her knuckles. Everyone’s noticed, Twiggy had waggled his eyebrows at Kirsten from across the room and smirked, and Joyce just can’t seem to stop staring at the green on her neck, a smug little grin on her lips every time she’s close. It’s probably the most frustrating thing that Kirsten’s ever had to put up with, but she decides that if Catherine’s going to turn her into some kind of gofer, she’s going to be the best one they’ve got. She’s determined to force her way into Catherine’s attention, until she concedes and at least talks about it.

It takes months.

 

It’s an accident that they end up on a door to door together. Catherine’s only out because half of the team had come down with some kind of flu, and Kirsten’s the only one who was free to go with her. The conversation in the car had been purposefully light, and Kirsten doesn’t think that the radio would have been on had it been anybody else in the passenger seat.

“Catherine,” she says, and then, “Sarg.”

Catherine looks at her, stops the car, and sighs.

“I think we gotta talk about this.”

“Kirsten,” Catherine begins, shaking her head. “I told you, I don’t think it’s good for either of us if we try to follow this through.”

Kirsten starts to reply, to ask her why, to try to sort it out, but she’s cut off as somebody crosses the road behind the car, and Catherine’s eyes widen, following the man closely. The colour drains from her cheeks, and Kirsten notes the way her knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she says, and then gets out, setting off at a jog down the alleyway the man had disappeared to.

 

The next day, she lets them all know that Tommy Lee Royce is out of prison, gives them all a briefing, tries to keep it as impersonal as she can. Kirsten holds Shafiq’s hand as they both listen to Catherine talk, watch her as she slumps in the desk chair, looking worn out and pissed off. Shaf has tears in his eyes by the time Catherine’s finished, and they all promise that they’ll keep an eye out, report anything suspicious, try and find out where the little bastard is staying. Kirsten leaves the issue with the marks alone, sees that Catherine has more things on her plate - bigger fish to fry - but she lets her know that she’s there if she needs her, no strings attached.

 

She’s alert, aware, but not as much as she should be. She picks Ryan up from school, asks him about what he had for lunch, and she chalks the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach down to being overtired and stressed out of her mind. When Tommy appears in front of her, she feels like she’s been winded. She’d not ever expected the twat to be so unapologetic, and she gets Ryan into the car before she’s even thought about it.

“How come Becky’s dead?” he asks, and she contemplates, just for a second, how it would feel to actually have his blood on her hands.

“I’m not talkin’ to you about my daughter.”

“That’s my lad.”

“He’s got  _ nothin’  _ to do with you.”

“You know me and your Becky had a thing goin’ on?”

She turns, quickly, grabs him and shoves him up against the wall, starts to talk - “listen, you bastard, you raped her-” but there’s a jolt and she gasps, her grip on his arms slacking just slightly as it feels like pure electricity is being pumped through her, pulsing through her fingers and up her arms, making her tremble and bite down on her tongue hard enough to draw blood. It’s over in seconds, and she shoves him again, tears obscuring her vision.

“I didn’t.” His voice is shaking, and she knows he’d felt it too.

“Yes you did, I know what you did to her - I know, because she told me. You better not cross me, arsehole, because if you do, I will chop your dick off and I’ll make you swallow it. Is there anything I’ve said that you’d like me to repeat more slowly?” She lets him go, and for a second he wavers, looks like he might fall, and she takes the opportunity to get into the car and drive off, her breathing so shallow that she feels like her lungs are collapsing in on themselves. Her hands still  _ hurt _ , and she doesn’t want to get home, doesn’t want to take off her gloves, and see whatever the fuck had happened.

 

“Through  _ clothes?”  _ Clare asks, sitting at the kitchen table and staring at Catherine’s hands like she’d grown three extra fingers. “Christ, Catherine.”

Her palms are icy blue, the exact shade that had appeared on Becky nine months before she died. “I told you,” she says, her voice thick with tears. “I had me gloves on, I had him by the jacket. What the fuck, Clare. What the  _ fuck.” _

 

She’s working late again when there’s a soft knock on the door. Kirsten comes in, holding up a plastic bag. “Chicken chow mein?” she asks, and Catherine smiles, taking off her glasses and leaning forward over the desk.

“God, you’re an angel,” she says, watching Kirsten set the bag on the desk and start pulling out the boxes.

“I thought you might want some company. Or at least some spring rolls. I know you didn’t eat today.”

Catherine smiles again, rolls her shoulders in a half hearted shrug. “Nothin’ gets past you, sunshine.”

Kirsten passes her the food and then reaches for her bag, reemerges with two bottles of beer. “Didn’t know which sort you liked for sure, but I’m guessin’ you ain’t a lager drinker.”

“Drinkin’ on the job?” Catherine asks, smiling lightly and reaching into her drawer for her keys, and thus the cheap bottle opener that hangs there.

Kirsten’s quiet as Catherine pops open each bottle, and it’s only when they’ve both settled back into their seats that she speaks. “They’re his marks, ain’t they?” she asks, although they both know it isn’t a question.

Catherine nods, takes a long drink from the bottle in her hand. “Yeah,” she says, avoiding meeting Kirsten’s gaze. “Yeah. Apparently gloves and jackets and t shirts just don’t do the trick anymore.”

Kirsten reaches across the desk and takes Catherine’s hand, turning it over so that her palm faces the desk. She wordlessly runs her fingers slowly over the other marks there; hers, Clare’s, Mike’s, Ryan’s, and meets the sergeant’s eyes, and Catherine smiles gratefully.

“I know,” she says quietly. “I do. Thank you.”

Kirsten just nods and lets go of Catherine’s hand, returns her attention to the takeaway in front of her. “So,” she says, looking up and grinning. “Shit weather, innit?”

 

Tuesdays become takeout nights, which become going home and watching shit tv with takeout nights, and gradually, something happens between them. It’s a kind of routine and security that Catherine’s never had, and it’s a comfort to be able to sit with her, with this woman who had crashed into her life with no forewarning whatsoever, and just be able to be mad or sad or tipsy or tired, without any filter or worry or insecurity. What they have it just good, and she can’t help, gradually, wanting it to shift into something else, something more.

 

They’ve picked up an annoying habit of being on the phone to each other while they’re out on jobs, and Catherine’s planning, tonight, to ask Kirsten if she wants to give it a go, properly. They’re talking about what they’re going to watch later, when Kirsten interrupts herself.

“Ooh! Gotta go. Jenson Button’s just streaked past in a white tranny. I think he’s tryna smash the land speed record, bless him. And he’s got a tail light out - I think I might give him a tug.”

Catherine nods, “okay, well you be careful,” she says. “And don’t be long, I wanna send everyone home in ten minutes. I wanna go home in ten minutes.”

 

She wakes up in hospital, on a ward that’s lit only by her bedside lamp and the monitors that disturb the silence with their steady beeping, and she groans, turns her head carefully, and there’s Catherine, curled up in the world’s most uncomfortable looking chair, sleeping with her cheek resting on her hand.

“Catherine-” she tries, but her mouth is wooly from the anaesthetic, and she realises that she’s thirsty. She turns, reaches for the call button and after a few seconds, manages to push it.

A nurse comes in, followed by Mike, and as the nurse disappears to get her a glass of water, Mike smiles. He looks tired, stressed, unshaven, but he smiles as he looks at her, and she recognises that it’s a smile that’s made of pure relief. He glances at Catherine, still sleeping, and shakes his head.

“She won’t leave this bedside,” he whispers, and Kirsten smiles, faintly as the a cold glass is held to her lips and she sips, and slides back into unconsciousness.

 

The next time she wakes up, the first thing she sees is that Catherine’s awake, and she’s preoccupied with picking at the cotton on her sleeve.

“Go home, Catherine,” Kirsten whispers, and her voice is dry and hoarse but Catherine jumps as though she had screamed at her.

“Hello,” she says softly, leaning forward and taking Kirsten’s hand, holding it tightly. She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. They’re puffy and bloodshot and one of them is purple and black and yellow, her lip is split and her cheek is grazed.

“Catherine?”

She waves away the unasked question, and shakes her head. “Don’t,” she whispers, smoothing Kirsten’s hair back gently. “It’s alright. It’s okay. I promise.”

 

The next Tuesday, she comes back with some Chinese, and Kirsten’s able to sit up and nibble at the bits Catherine had brought with her, and when they’re finished, Catherine falls asleep in the chair, and Kirsten curls up as much as her healing legs will allow her to, curls towards the older woman, and slides into sleep with her fingers tight around Catherine’s.

 

Kirsten’s released to Catherine’s care the week after, she’s given a bottle of painkillers and a strict schedule to finish, and she has to attend physiotherapy once every week to get back on her feet again until she’s given the green light to stop going.

When she gets back to Catherine’s house, she starts remembering bits of what happened. The van, the car, the crunch, and Catherine fills her in with the rest. She’d got there, she said, just in time. She’d got there and given him hell, and he’d given it back but she’d got him, and he was gone, and they were both okay now, they were going to stay okay.

When she’s woken up with nightmares, Catherine holds her tightly, strokes her hair, whispers about how, when she’s better, they’ll get chips on the beach, stay in a small hotel on the coast and walk for miles and miles, tells her she knows of a deserted lighthouse they can go to, tells her stories about the people she knows and the places she’s been until she falls asleep again, her cheeks wet and tight with tears.

 

Catherine hadn’t dared to believe, after Richard, that her marks could ever actually mean something, that she could ever find anybody who would fit so well, but now… now when she cups Kirsten’s neck and kisses her gently, and she runs her thumb over the smudge of dark green, she knows that she had been wrong. They go to sleep tangled together, a mess of soft limbs and long hair and tight grips, and Catherine whispers every morning and every night - first thought last thought - that she loves her. That she’s in love with Kirsten McAskill, that she always will be, that there won’t ever be a mark that burns brighter, both on her skin and in her mind, and Kirsten smiles, kisses her warmly, and every time she tells her that she knows.

**Author's Note:**

> title is from volatile times - iamx


End file.
